John Kavanagh: If Conor McGregor lost, I would have gotten ‘Ronda Rousey’s coach’s treatment’

John Kavanagh had dozens of worried Irish fans come up to him last week. Some of them apologized that he was not Conor McGregor’s coach anymore. Others were flat outraged.

“I spent all my life savings on this trip and you have him doing cucaracha or something,” Kavanagh said one fan told him.

The coach’s response to all of them was this: “You must be watching UFC Embedded.”

The vlog series follows around fighters in the final week before big fights. In this particular edition, McGregor was shown doing drills with new movement coach Ido Portal. Some of them looked downright silly — like putting out candles with the snap of his wrist or dancing on the beach.

Many McGregor fans were horrified. They saw Jose Aldo looking like a monster hitting mitts, while McGregor was messing around on a balance beam. Kavanagh assured Monday on The MMA Hour with Ariel Helwani that more went on in McGregor’s camp than just these unorthodox drills.

“That’s a 10-second look at our day,” Kavanagh said. … “We do a lot of hard training. There’s a lot of tough rounds that have to be done in preparation for a fight like this.”

McGregor (19-2), of course, ended up knockout Aldo out in just 13 seconds Saturday night in the main event of UFC 194 in Las Vegas. The brash Irishman is now the undisputed UFC featherweight champion — and perhaps the biggest pay-per-view draw in the sport following reports that UFC 194 was the second biggest PPV in UFC history.

Bringing in Portal seems like a stroke of brilliance now, doesn’t it?

“Apparently I’m a genius now that this was my idea,” Kavanagh said with a laugh. “But if he’d have lost, I’d have gotten poor Ronda Rousey’s coach’s treatment. I would have been the worst human ….View full article